Lahore School of Economics

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Mr. Sohail Butt, Group Manager Demand and Supply Planning Nestle visited the Lahore school of Economics on 2 November 2015 to deliver a lecture on 'Forecasting'.

According to Mr. Sohail, the best way to predict the future is to create it (how Apple started off with a vision and went beyond people's needs). Forecasting helps to predict and identify disruptions in the market. Once the disruption is forecasted the organization can take measures accordingly to ensure a smooth transition through the disruptive phase.

Mr. Sohail said that there were various options that an organization could opt for once it had identified a disruption in the near future. It can either come up with innovative ideas to add value to its product to ensure its survival or it could try to slow down the disruptive innovation long enough to be able to further improve it before adopting it. According to Mr. Sohail , the later is done by large organizations so that they can control the disruption and come to power with it. Another option available to the organization is to get close to the exist and prepare for a quick escape. For this he gave the example of IBM's laptops. The speaker highlighted the importance of forecasting in inventory management, efficient resources planning and decision making.

Mr. Sohail moved on to explain the ways through which forecasting could be improved. These involved understating what Forecasting was , Forecasting with inputs from all levels of the organization, removal of redundancies , efficient use of forecasting tools and measuring performance.